Have you ever intentionally taken on a little more than you think you can handle? If you have, why?
I'm doing it this semester because I don't want to give my mind time to wander. My dad is not doing well. I don't want to publicize the details, so you'll have to believe me. The doctors either cannot or will not tell us what his current group of diagnoses mean in terms of prognosis except to say, several times, that it's not good. I don't want time to consider possible implications of his current health beyond an initial thought. Oddly, this situation seems to help me concentrate on work most of the time. I'm making progress on most fronts.
In pursuit of the goal to keep myself busy, here are my major work-related activities this semester:
- Prelim: The proposal write-up is due November 23, and the oral presentation is tentatively schedule for December 9. That leaves me a little over two months to write it. My to-do list says "come up with plan for prelim."
- Research for AMS 2011 in January: I don't know if I have a poster or oral presentation yet, but it doesn't matter. I need results to present either way. The first step is downloading data. Thankfully I wasn't optimistic enough to believe I could have model results in time.
- @#$% MS paper: Yep, still going. The Energizer paper. At least I'm working on a first round of revisions to most of the text. Computers still are not cooperating to finish the final two figures.
- Copyediting for the school newspaper: This only consumes three hours one night a week. It'll give me a taste of what working on a tight deadline is like without too much time commitment.
- Writing for the school STEM magazine: Only one issue will be published this semester, so I will write one article for print, one article for the web, and two blog posts. It should be straightforward and relatively quick since the articles are supposed to be short. It'll challenge me more to choose a topic than to write the articles.
- Intern as a science writer with the university news bureau: I'm excited about this. My mentor actually gets paid to write about science! And she's professional about it! How refreshing. The internship can take as much or as little time as I let it because I accept (or turn down) assignments as they crop up. Finally, some reliable mentoring in writing.
The work for my only class should pull double-duty with my PhD research, so I don't count it as a major commitment.
I also intend to help my family as possible and as needed, attend all the jujitsu practices I can, and occasionally go rock climbing, ice skating, and biking. Oh, and cook tasty food. I have to eat, right?
If you think I'm crazy, you're not alone. I think my mom is the only person who doesn't question me anymore. She's learned that many of my seemingly crazy ideas are some of the ones that work out the best.
This month's Scientiae topic is research equipment. For me, it's pretty simple. My main equipment consists of my laptop, research group computers, the department computing clusters, and a supercomputer or two. So, yeah, computers. "Lab" is a foreign concept.
This setup lets me work from many locations. In the past few months, I've worked from Wisconsin, Illinois, Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland (I was too tired in Ohio and refused to open my computer in New York). I can log on to any of the big computers through the internet. Even the data I use is available remotely. I download it to my laptop or directly to one of the other computers from whoever stores it (usually some government organization).
I use the terminal window religiously. I recently added nxclient to my repertoire, which gives me a GUI desktop for an interactive node dedicated to my research group. That's handier than I expected. Between these two interfaces, I can run programs interactively or in batch mode (submit a job that will run when the resources become available).
I reroute the output into a text file so I don't have to babysit the program, I can review the output later, and the program will not crash if my laptop dies or I lose my network connection. If I had to run everything interactively and couldn't record the output, I would have violently and permanently killed at least one computer by now. As it stands, I have non-violently killed several computers several times (including single-handedly jamming the department cluster), but I, my adviser, or the sys admin were always able to bring them back.
And my little macbook is the portal to it all. It's wonderful and dangerous at the same time.
I didn't present at the workshop in Knoxville. I wish I had something from my PhD work to present because I was a minority in focusing on the physical and dynamical aspects of climate science rather than the chemical and biological. I think I would have added breadth to the two days of talks.
Since a lot of them focused on chemistry and my last chemistry class was introductory chemistry for science majors six years ago, I did not understand many details of the studies. Nonetheless, I found the workshop valuable beyond the basic conclusions I gleaned from each talk. Hearing about other's work inspired me to return to my own research. Perhaps Musings of a Life-Long Scholar hit on a good motivational tip: read 1000 words of scientific literature at the start of each work day. I might remember more of the literature that way, too.
Ironically, it is difficult to work while at a workshop. I attended talks all day and networked/socialized in the evenings. It was a perfect time to run programs that require hours of computer time and little babysitting. Running those programs gets me much closer to finishing the figures I need for the MS paper. I hope to have a full draft by Labor Day weekend, if not earlier.
I realize I've set goals like this before and missed them. Too often. I need to meet one of them to restore confidence in myself as a self-driven student. I used to know that without question. I'm not always sure anymore. I keep telling myself that I need time to adjust to the personal upheavals of the past year. At what point do reasons become excuses?
My brother's wedding was not perfect but it was close. We only had a few minor problems that were easily remedied. Music and toasts were good and dinner was excellent. My mom and I hosted the gift opening yesterday morning (with a lot of prep help from family). Everyone liked the food there, too. My family likes food.
I enjoyed the whirlwind wedding weekend. I'm also glad it's over. My abstract for the 2011 AMS Annual Meeting is due today and I'm still short on sleep. Today I'm free to rest, bike, and work. Tomorrow and Wednesday I'll take my dad for treatment. Wednesday evening I will return to Grad School Town for a few meetings and to prepare for my Great East Coast Tour.
I haven't told you much about that yet, have I? It involves six cities over fifteen days: Knoxville, TN; Charlotte, NC; Hampton, VA; Alexandria, VA; Adelphi, MD; and New York City.
Family and friends keep asking why I decided to take this trip. It started when I realized that Knoxville, where I'm attending a professional workshop, is halfway to the East Coast. I may as well drive the other half to visit my friend in Adelphi. And since I'm in Adelphi, I should visit my friends a few hours away in Hampton. Then my brother's mother-in-law invited me to visit her in Charlotte. I couldn't pass that up. After all that, I thought about the one friend on the coast that wasn't part of my travel plans. Why wasn't he included? No reason, so I decided to drive to NYC to visit him, too. I convinced my Adelphi friend to meet me in Hampton and accompany me to NYC. Yay, more friend time!
I'll miss the first week of classes, but that's not a big deal. I'm taking my adviser's class. He'll be gone for most of the first week, and when he returns he'll cover some computing basics that I already know.
Of course my road bike will come with me. I plan to ride the Apple Cider Century in southwest Michigan on September 26, so I need to incorporate training rides into my travel. Between the Tour and the Century, my jujitsu dojo is attending a big workshop in Ohio the second weekend of September. Stories will surely ensue. I'm excited on all counts!
I hope I'm still alive at the end of it. I need to do some serious work this fall. I will also try to work on my handy dandy laptop during my travels. Will I ever leave work at home when I take a vacation? I cannot escape this love-hate relationship with technology.
I celebrated the first anniversary of depositing my master's thesis a few days ago. Reading my posts from a year ago, it would seem that I have gotten nowhere in the last year. I just started writing my prelim proposal and have yet to submit the paper based on my thesis. Despite my lack of visible productivity, I have accomplished a lot in the past year personally and professionally.
On the personal side, I went from living with my ex-boyfriend and two cats to living alone. That involved a drawn-out transition that I believe is finally coming to a close. My house is much cleaner and more peaceful than before, and I'm confident that I've made good, if difficult, decisions in light of the circumstances life handed me. I am now free to help my family on short notice if my dad's condition suddenly changes. When I'm not visiting family, I am able to focus more on myself and redirecting my life along a more satisfying path. I am becoming more the me I want to be by the day. That involves new career goals, new and renewed hobbies, and learning from all the trials of recent years.
Professionally, I admitted my passion for language and broad learning. As a scientist, I'd face deep learning and technical, utilitarian writing--not the best fit. Because of this seemingly obvious epiphany (as so many are in hindsight), I began to seek training in journalism. A couple of the instructors from the journalism department at my school are working with me to plan a curriculum that will fit with my PhD work. I'm really excited to meet with them in a couple of weeks! I feel more certain in my career plans than I have in years even though they're still developing. I'm running on pure faith that I'll find a way to pay off my undergrad loans (I suppose that's not much of a change).
My hobbies and hope for the future carry me over all the hurdles I face. Part of my life is unpredictable right now because of my dad's illness, but it does not comprise my life. In pursuit of being the best me I can, here some of my goals:
Six months- pass my prelim
- complete the first objective listed in my PhD research proposal and present the results at a national professional conference
- submit the MS paper
- ride a century (100 miles)
- gain experience in journalism and/or science writing, either through a class or an internship
- test for my blue belt in jujitsu (a stretch, but not impossible)
- continue to read as if my books are disintigrating before my eyes
One year- complete more of the PhD-specific goals I'll come up with as part of my prelim (TBD)
- have a portfolio of usable writing clips
- start working on the first paper based on my PhD research
- ride my bike a bunch--at least one century next season
- gain proficiency in jujitsu to at least the level of green tip
- travel somewhere new
Instead of feeling lost as I have for many months, I'm excited for all the opportunities coming this year. I only dread two possibilities: letting fear get in my way and my dad's treatment not going well. The former I can prevent. The latter I will ignore unless it happens because there is no way to prepare for it.
To end on a positive note, I am elated about my upcoming tour of the East Coast. I can't wait to visit so many places and good friends. It'll be a great adventure!
Posted for the August 2010 edition of Scientiae, hosted by Alyssa at Apple Pie and the Universe.
